What I Didn’t Learn At School

Every now and then I get asked how most of my traffic comes from search engines and not Twitter and Facebook. The answer to that question is Search Engine Optimization. I spend much time on Twitter and Facebook to get new feedback from readers and to connect with other bloggers and marketing gurus out there. But the real work of attracting readers is already done with SEO all through my blog.

I have given many SEO tips on this blog in the past but never really focused on the mistakes many people find them self doing. If you need a refresh on how to optimize your blog, take a look at my first and only episode of WIDLAS TV.

So what is the biggest SEO mistakes that I see people do?

1. To Many Keywords
   It’s important that you write blogposts for your readers, not the Search Engines. If you put to many keywords in one article you may end up with something we call Keyword stuffing and Search Engines punish you for that and will give you some kind of penalty.
2. Dont’ Use Link Networks
   You know the importances of linking to other sites and get links back. But all those big link networks that really don’t have any content just links is not really a good way to start. It can give you an unfair advantage so that you will get an higher Page Rank then you normally would but trust me, Google knows about them and have already punished a lot of sites linking up with them. So stay away from all kinds of networks like this and you will be good.
3. Unnatural Link Growth
   Building up links to your site takes a long time. Often years to get it to sit right. You may be lucky and end up on the front page of Digg.com but a link growth like that is calculated. Also a great backlink can make you an instant success. All that is good but it’s the “I have no time so I just buy 100 hard links in one day” methods that will make the Search Engines see red flags all over. So have some ice in your belly and let link building take it’s time.
4. Don’t Overkill Directory Submissions
   There is tons of directories out there where you can submit your site to. I’ve spoken to many people in forums that outsource this kind of work and pay for this job getting done. And probably with good reason too since it’s an important part of the SEO. But there is two big mistakes that often is done here. First don’t submit to many directories at once. Do a maximum of 10-15 a month. And what ever you do, you need to vary your anchor text for your URL. Don’t use the same anchor text in each directory.
   
   
5. Use Anchor Text The Right Way
   You should always use anchor text on images and all outgoing and internal links in your blogposts. But remember to diversify the anchor text at least for all the links and images in the same blogpost. I will also recommend to do this throughout the blog. Don’t just use SEO as an anchor text, use “How to Optimize For Search Engines” and various form of that. Get it? Look at Anchor text as asking many people to describe the same thing. You would get a lot of different answers wouldn’t you?

Learn from my mistakes and get it right the first time. And please give me feedback if you found this post helpful.